The Hill
Biden campaign hits Trump over guests at upcoming Palm Beach high-dollar fundraiser
Alex Gangitano – April 5, 2024
President Biden’s reelection campaign hit former President Trump on Friday over the guest list for his high-dollar fundraiser in Palm Beach, Fla., this weekend.
Trump is aiming to outraise Biden’s $26 million fundraiser in New York City last week with the event hosted Saturday by hedge fund founder John Paulson. The event is expected to raise $33 million.
In a statement first sent to The Hill, the Biden campaign focused on the expected attendees to hit Trump on his fundraising strategy of looking to billionaires who have targeted programs such as Social Security.
“If you want to know who Donald Trump will fight for in a second term, just look at who he is having over for dinner Saturday night – tax cheats, scammers, racists, and extremists,” Biden campaign senior spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said.
“Make no mistake, Donald Trump will do the bidding of his billionaires buddies instead of what is best for the American people. He’ll take their checks and cut their taxes, and leave hard working Americans behind, shipping their jobs overseas, gutting Social Security and Medicare, ripping away health care protections, and banning abortion,” she added.
The Biden campaign pointed to Paulson, whom Trump has reportedly considered for Treasury Secretary if he wins, and who said during a 2018 New York University panel that Social Security could be switched to “to defined contribution from defined benefit.”
It called out Jeff Yass, a billionaire businessman and major investor in TikTok, as an expected attendee who floated privatizing Social Security accounts in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece in 2019.
Protecting Social Security has been a major talking point for Biden, one that was stepped up after Trump said in a CNBC interview recently that there was “a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting.”
Additionally, the campaign pointed to Michael Hodges, founder of a payday lender, as an attendee. He reportedly told other payday lenders in 2019 that contributions to Trump’s 2020 campaign could mean access to the then-administration, according to The Washington Post. It also pointed out that members of the Mercer family are Trump donors and that hedge fund manager Robert Mercer has argued that the Civil Rights Act was a mistake, citing The New Yorker.
The Biden campaign also pointed to John Catsimatidis, who is expected at the dinner. Catsimatidis, a billionaire who ran for New York City mayor in 2013, compared former President Obama’s plans in 2013 to raise taxes on the wealthy to how “Hitler punished the Jews,” according to Newsweek.
The Biden campaign also argued that Trump’s grassroots fundraising, a strong spot for him in previous campaigns, has slowed down. Meanwhile, the Biden campaign told The Hill that it had its best grassroots fundraising month to date in March, breaking its own record for small-dollar donations for a fifth consecutive month.